Pioneering ECJ president dies, aged 90

BARON Josse Mertens de Wilmars, president of the European Court of Justice in 1980-84, has died at the age of 90.

European Voice

9/4/02, 5:00 PM CET

Updated 4/12/14, 8:19 AM CET

A well-known figure in his native Belgium, Mertens de Wilmars was appointed to the Luxembourg-based court in 1967. During his tenure, dubbed the era of the ‘gouvernement des juges’, he helped draft the judgements which underlined the supremacy of European Community law over national law.

Born into a brewers’ family on 22 June 1912 in Sint-Niklaas-Waas, Mertens de Wilmars graduated in law in 1934 and joined the Antwerp Bar, at first specialising in administrative law and subsequently in European law.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was commissioned into the Belgian Army. After being captured by the Germans at Calais in 1940, he was sent to a POW camp.

He later played a leading role in establishing the post-war regime in Belgium. He represented the Catholic alliance, which foreshadowed the Christelijke Volkspartij (CVP, now CD&V), at the 1948 Congress of The Hague that created the Mouvement pour une Europe Unie. Between 1952 and 1962 he twice sat as a member of the Belgian Parliament. He also taught administrative law in the High Institute for Administrative Sciences in Antwerp between 1946 and 1967 and was a professor of European law at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven during his time at the European Court of Justice.

He married Betty van Ormelingen in 1939, with whom he had eight children. His grandson Harold Nyssens followed in his footsteps as an official at the ECJ and now works at DG Competition in the European Commission.